Production machines encounter issues where some number of printed sheets must be removed from the collated output, such as a partially printed purged sheet in an inline finishing application. Such sheets often include contractual requirements that call for their destruction such as, for example, paychecks or account statements. Such confidential matters must be destroyed so as to make the contents of the documents illegible so that disclosure of the contents of the documents or the like is prevented. A print station, for example, can instruct the operator to remove the appropriate sheets bearing confidential matters of an interrupted job. Such devices, however, cannot ensure the destruction of such documents. Hence, it is essential to provide an apparatus that destroys documents in order to preserve the confidentiality of the information contained in the documents.
Many document management programs have been established to provide systemic procedures for the destruction of partially printed purged sheets. Devices for destroying or shredding documents for security purposes are known as “shredders”. These devices are widely used for the destruction of documents containing confidential or sensitive information. Shredders destroy documents by cutting or tearing into narrow strips or small segments in order to ensure that the information contained in the documents is illegible. One problem associated with prior art shredding devices is that they do not have the ability to verify the content of the documents before shredding and to store the record of documents that are destructed for later reconciliation.
Based on the foregoing it is believed that a need exists for a shredder, which integrates with a scanner in order to provide visual documentation of purge sheet destruction. A need also exists for storing the scanned document for later reconciliation.